Wednesday, October 24, 2007

John K Commercials part 1: TV Commercials

My commercials have won some awards but more importantly - they sold the product very well.Spumco Nike

I try to make entertaining commercials that the audience doesn't want to fast forward through.

My philosophy when I make commercials is to satisfy 2 customers:

1) The Sponsor

I believe in selling the product first. I want to be creative, but my creativity is in service of getting the audience to like the product and want to buy it.

I'm definitely not out to merely exercise my creative vision and make films that look good on my reel.

Pushing the product is where I exercise my creativity. And it's a lot of fun for me to do that.

2) The Audience

I believe the audience has to want to watch a commercial for it to be effective. Today it is very hard to grab people's attention before they instantly grab the remote and fast forward through the commercials.

My commercials have a history of people enjoying themselves and remembering the product.

I designed and animated the original Old Navy Cartoon Spots. When they aired, ON informed me their product sales increased 500%.

36 comments:

Fantastic commercials, I love every one of them, especially the Nike one I have always loved it since the first time I saw it (that was when Spumco.com was still on!). That design of Red Hot Ridding Hood is among the sexiest girl I've seen in your cartoons (with the blonde girl in Firedogs 2 part 2) and the wolf looks very solid. Piggies have funny faces, and the near black and white coloring is great. Beautiful stuff.

It's not that I want to start preaching again, but I kinda like how all those are directed to a general audience. With your own stuff I think you go a little too "underground" sometimes. I've said before I love some kinds of underground, but the gross and sex stuff in cartoons I think it's more enjoyable while keeping it subtle. It's cool to have those things, but I prefer erotism to pornography, so to speak, and little gross jokes instead of long ones.

I had never seen the Village Pantry one before, very nice music and color in it.

Those were great. I never saw the Root Beer and Village Pantry commericals before. Commericals today sure do suck. I watch them and I ponder who the hell the target audience is. I asssume robots because no person can be that boring.

My friend has a cel from the Nike commercial, neatly framed and hanging on his wall! I wish it was mine. It's one of the drawings where the wolf is fully inhaled, like a balloon! I think my favorite part of this commercial is how the shoes are drawn. You can tell they're Nike, even though they're in cartoony form.

I live in the market where the Village Pantry spot was shown. I remember them, and thought they were unusually clever, especially for the company that owned those stores then. They certainly got attention. I think this spot shows your versatility.

Thanks for putting these clips up in such a good quality!! They'll be a treat to analyze! I had only seem some of them in shitty 10 frames per second low res files. If i told you how much time i spend looking for a decent clip of that aoki pizza spot you probably wouldn't believe me, John!

These commercials are really fun to watch (like those John Hubley commercials Amid recently posted at Cartoon Brew). There is some great animation in these, especially in the George Liquor beer commercial.

I saw that Nike ad of yours at a film festival in Stuttgart Germany over 3 years ago. You produced it through the Acme Production company or something like that. I liked it then and I like it now. Well done.

"The reason American cars don’t sell anymore is that they have forgotten how to design the American Dream. What does it matter if you buy a car today or six months from now, because cars are not beautiful. That’s why the American auto industry is in trouble: no design, no desire."

These should be cartoons. They are funny, entertaining and well-made, as cartoons should be. But they're commercials and commercials make me want to tear my own face off. I mean, these are the animated equivalent of a used-car salesman. Or one of those age-old encyclopedia sellers. They serve only to hawk shit we don't need.

Okay maybe some people need new cars.

Still, these look lovely and are so damn well made I can't help wishing they were for entertainment.

But then, I'm bitter because I've had to make ads to live and I can tell you that if there is one person in the entire ad business who is not stuck up his own arse, I haven't met them.

I've always loved your commercials. I second Roberto on the sexy riding hood. I always thought that Nike one was great. And Roxy (that's her name, right?) just makes those jeans so cool. Yeah you did a great job on all those. Very fun stuff.

I wish there were more commercials like these on TV today, some cereal commercials are alright (better than some of the actual cartoons they're aired between) but I'm tired of boring 3D masccots, and flash paper cut out insurance salespeople.